Wednesday, May 10, 2006

33%

This image by Robin is from one our television projects called Dog Tags Urban.

Before I started a company I would see oportunities to do work and I would think that, if I had a studio, I would be able to do this or that project and it would be cool. I always thought about the missed opportunities that wouldn't happen because I had the facilities to do the work. I would talk to my wife and friends and they would encourage me to start a studio and make it happen. I felt I was prepared to do the job and I was confident that I could find or train the talent I would need. For the most part this would turn out to be true. I was mostly prepared to build my studio and I did find and train some good talent. Unfortunately, there are numerous thing that happen that you can't predict unless you do it. The thing that I was most unprepared for was the rate of disappointment when it comes to securing projects. Just because someone tells you that they want to give you a project, doesn't mean that you are actually going to get it. There are a myriad of reasons for projects to fall apart and most of the time it has nothing to do with the studio, but they fall apart regardless. We are currently at about a 20% success rate at securing projects. That means four of every five potential projects are lost. My goal is to raise this rate to 33%. One in three may not seem that great but it's actually a really good success rate. I might of reconsidered this studio thing if I had known that it would have required this much rejection. Luckily the times when you actually get the project, like we did today, more than make up for all the others you miss.

you are doing fantastically well!we had a 8 pitches to every one ad we got strike rate for years. we would just about recover the cost of pitching for so many ads when we got one in, and ads were the most profitable part of the service work we did.congrats on securing that latest gig!